Transatlantic Crossing

across the wine dark sea

Leaving natal shores on board the Queen Mary 2, last of the ocean liners

Mon cher ami,

We closed the door of the old house. We’d fed the chickens and kissed two little children good-bye.

“Au revoir, Bonne Maman,” said little Owen. His sister merely smiled and offered to rub noses.

“Aw!,” she exclaimed, fluttering her eyelashes with conscious sweetness. She doesn’t use words yet.

The driver and the hired car were waiting. Monsieur was impatient. We had a ship to board.

Spring had barely begun to warm deep roots and tender bulbs in Maryland, our point of departure on that balmy afternoon. Daffodils had been blooming for just a week. The rare yellow blossoms of the magnolia “Elizabeth” were starting to unfurl. And petals from a pair of tall, aged plum trees were strewn over the ragged grass of the orchard.

With an inward sigh, we climbed into the car. Turning back, we could see little Owen lifting the wooden handles of his small red wheelbarrow. He was already thinking of piling in sticks for the fire. Little Charlotte’s mind had probably begun to dwell on lunch.

We turned away. We were setting sail, debarking from natal shores for the Old Continent across the Atlantic. We are tired of hustling through airports, winding through interminable lines like sheep in a maze, being scolded through security checkpoints.

But mostly, we wanted time. Between the pier in New York and the quai in Southampton would be eight days with nothing to see but the vast ocean bending into the horizon. And nothing to do.

In the car, we caught up on email, too busy even to fall asleep. By mid-afternoon, we’d arrived at the port of Brooklyn. We put down our phones and looked out the window.

The Queen Mary 2, last of the great ocean liners, was docked and waiting at the pier. Long and proportionally narrow, she is built for speed rather than leisurely cruising. If you stood her on end beside the Tour Eiffel, she would be taller by 150 feet.

Her namesake, the first Queen Mary, surged into the Atlantic in 1936, vying with her great rival, the French paquebot Le Normandie for luxury, style, and speed. Theirs were halcyon days.

Feats of engineering had made ocean crossings ever faster and more pleasant. The Mayflower took months to lumber from England to American shores. Two hundred years later, the streamlined hulls and massive sails of clipper ships cut down crossing time to a mere 30 days. In 1838, to great excitement, the sailing steamship SS Sirius then broke all records, sailing out of Cork to New York harbor in 18 days, 4 hours and 22 minutes. She beat the fastest transatlantic sailing ships and a rival steamer by burning every available lump of coal, stick of wood, and leaf of paper on board – or so it was said. Immediately afterwards, she returned to her modest origins, carrying the mail between Cork and London.

But the age of the great transatlantic liners had begun.

By the time the first Queen Mary was in mid-career, a sumptuous ocean liner could shoot across the Atlantic in a mere 3 days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes. But one revolution leads to another. In 1958, Pan Am flew a Boeing 707 from New York to London in 7 hours. And it wasn’t long before jets offered much of the comfort, if not the amusements, of an ocean voyage.

The great fleet of luxurious ocean liners dwindled. Ship-builders turned instead to the lucrative new business of leisure cruising. But our Queen Mary 2, although she must cruise the Norwegian fjords in summer and the Caribbean Sea in winter, still makes 20 or more transatlantic crossings a year.

When she was built in 2004, RMS Queen Mary 2 was a marvel of naval engineering, outfitted with huge retractable fins to ensure stability through the swells and four propulsors that power her through the water and also allow her to neatly manoeuvre in and out of port. Although she is capable of high speed, the Queen’s crossing lasts eight days. Passengers may enjoy shipboard amenities to the fullest while the Cunard Lines save on fuel.

It was late afternoon by the time we were installed in our cabin. We hadn’t managed to book a deluxe suite. Evidently, the Happy Few reserve these far in advance. But we did have a balcony, and our cabin was 3 times larger than the chambre de bonne in our old apartment in Paris.

We went outside to gather on the aft deck with a crowd of fellow passengers. A few hardy travelers frolicked in the pool. A halo of glowing afternoon light traced the skyline of New York. Windows of skyscrapers blazed in the sharp beams of a fading sun. The ship pulled away into the harbor.

The band struck up. Almost at once, a hearty breeze blew away the sound of the music and singing. We went inside for dinner.

Many years ago, pregnant with my first child, I had invited my oldest childhood friend to join me on a similar voyage from New York to Southampton. It was the month of November.

The monotony of the misty seascape was as delightful and soothing as the monotony of our daily schedule. We did almost nothing. Twice during the voyage, my friend and I went to a musical performance. We went to the fancy dress ball. For the sake of it, we once went to the casino, played the slots, and had a go at roulette. Most afternoons, I went out on the upper deck. A steward would bring a thick blanket of grey wool and a hot cup of bouillon. As I lay half-asleep on a deck chair, the ship slid through grey seas and the damp grey skies.

But we did enjoy one bout of excitement.

My friend had joined me on the deck. While I drowsed in my blankets, she looked out at sea.

“There’s a body in the water!” she exclaimed, suddenly. She insisted I look down into the roiling water. Something that looked like a black trash bag was bobbing below.

“Don’t exaggerate!” I told her, lying back on my deck chair. A few hours later, we were at dinner. The ship began to make awkward rocking movements. Was it foundering? No, it was turning around, the waiter told us.

“Usually that’s because someone has gone overboard.”

He winked. But we thought it might be no laughing matter.

We went to see the captain, a stern and rosy-cheeked sailor who looked at us skeptically as we told him of the black object in the water. Not until we docked at Southampton did we learn that a woman and her lover had thrown her poor old husband over the rail.

Perhaps it was the heartless insouciance of extreme youth, but this shocking incident never marred my pleasant memories of that transatlantic crossing.

When Monsieur proposed we cross the Atlantic this Spring, I recalled those sleepy afternoons tucked up in a wool blanket looking out to a misty sea. It had been an unrelentingly busy winter. Eight days of quiet and solitude awaited us.

Once we had settled into our cabin for the night, we looked over the newsletter left by the steward.

A lecture series on early Christian heresies and the apocalypse. Lectures in the planetarium on stars, Mars, and life in space. The fancy-dress ball. Pilates, yoga, stretching, spa treatments. Weight-training in the gym. A morning constitutional around the deck every morning.

We were busy from morning to night.

Patience, the hairdresser, gave Monsieur a trim. Pretty, her colleague, gave me a manicure. I signed up for a detoxifying herbal supplement series.

Every day, we listened to live music. There was a harpist, a string trio, and a classical ensemble. In the evening, the remarkable pianist in the top deck’s snug little bar improvised until midnight. An opera singer in the tiny cluster of afficionados joined in whenever she recognized a tune. So did her sister, when she wasn’t performing a rock ‘n’ roll show on the stage downstairs. A jazz quartet performed in another bar. The pianist’s son, traveling with his wife and child, sat in with them on the drums from time to time. The indefatigable rock ‘n’ rock singer pitched in, too. One night, she led them in Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” The camaraderie among musicians was as enlivening and heart-warming as the music itself.

We took dancing lessons. We brushed up on the waltz and the foxtrot. We learned the Samba. We attempted the Jive.

Around 4 o’clock every afternoon, we took part in a tea ritual with several hundred shipmates. An army of uniformed waiters and waitresses would line up. The band would strike a lively march. Everyone began to clap in rhythm. The waiters filed down the ramp bearing enormous silver pots of hearty black tea. Platter-bearing waiters distributed scones, sandwiches, and cake.

It wasn’t exactly like taking hot bouillon in solitary splendor on a misty deck, but our shipboard routine was full of life.

A family of Mennonites, the women in starched white caps and the men with full beards, were on the ship. They spoke German. A French couple danced le rock français. At meals we met people who were cruising for months at a time. Some just didn’t like to fly. Others, like us, were looking forward to a quiet respite, a serene expanse of time as we left behind one continent and prepared for another.

One morning, in a disk of light beneath the rising sun, I saw flashes of silver on the pale water. Whales were surfacing in the freshness of early dawn. We were gliding over the Labrador Banks, whose shallow waters are fishing grounds. Soon, we were out in the deep reaches of the Atlantic, with no intimation of any other life in the surrounding sea and sky. The pale lavender ocean deepened to Homer’s wine-dark purple. A brilliant point of light, as the sun pieced the mist, began to lighten the broad horizon.

Just as we were getting used to brief interludes of solitude amid the vastness of sea and sky, followed by our lively round of amusements and sociability, the transatlantic crossing came to an end.

The first seabirds swooped down to catch fish in the waves. The sea lane gradually filled with tankers and container ships. We entered the English Channel. There was Plymouth, where our ancestors had departed for unknown shores and a rolling, pitching three-month voyage. The familiar Cotentin Peninsula was to the south, on the coast of Normandy. Southampton’s docks came into view.

That was in mid-April. Since then, we have been traveling. We spent five weeks in Argentina. Now, we are in Ireland, where my husband’s Irish lineage exerts its irresistible charm. Our family will gather on the Blackwater River. We won’t be in Courtomer again until mid-July.

Fortunately for my tranquility of mind, life at the Chateau follows its familiar, cheerful rhythm. Monsieur Martyn sends updates from the gardens. Monsieur Tony lets me know how our renovations are going. And recently, les petites cousines came to stay, along with their parents and some friends. They caught fish in the moat, picnicked, went to the market, enjoyed a restful parenthèse in their busy life of school and work in Paris.

Little cousins and friends fishing in the moat at Courtomer a couple of weeks ago.

In May, the bishop of Seés visited our Protestant Temple with a pastor from the Eglise Réformée and a group of amateurs of history. All prayed together. And then, I am told, all agreed that it would be good to take a sledgehammer to the thick concrete floor. This would uncover the graves of the Protestant seigneurs of Courtomer.

This weekend, enthusiasts of the Citroën DS will convene in the parc with an array of the fabled automobiles. The bourg of Courtomer’s comité de fêtes asked last

Meanwhile, the cattle, out at pasture after the winter and muddy spring, are growing glossy on new grass. Les cultures, the crops, are thriving with the recent rain, our farmer’s wife tells me.

“Pour le moment!” she adds with customary prudence.

My young horse, Katia, has done nicely at local shows with Romain, her rider. Although horses are even more unpredictable than les cultures, we are dreaming about Fontainebleau at the end of the season. This is where, after several days of showjumping, champions are crowned!

But if we mustn’t be too optimistic about the crops and Katia de Courtomer, we can thoroughly enjoy the news from the gardens. Courtomer is opulent with greenery.

The roses are in their first full bloom. Clematis drapes over the stone walls of the bâtiments de la ferme. Trees we planted in the parc have filled out and have grown taller. The waterlilies in the moat survived the depredations of the late and unlamented ragondin. And a peacock, wrote Monsieur Martyn, paid us an impromptu visit.

Avec mon fidèle souvenir, cher ami!